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The pieties strike back — against Trump
Washington Examiner ^ | Jan 02, 2017 | Noemie Emery

Posted on 01/01/2018 9:28:04 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom

Donald Trump, who pulled off an astonishing win over one year ago, is the least popular president ever elected thus far. Other presidents were elected, and became more unpopular later, but Trump was unpopular from the day he announced, unpopular while running, and unpopular the day he was elected as president, even while he was winning over 300 votes in the Electoral College.

At the same time, he had unprecedented levels of resistance from inside his party, some of whose members have never come over. He failed to win a majority of the votes cast in the Republican primary, and lost the popular vote by more than two million to the also-unpopular Hillary Clinton.

Trump won under 46 percent of the vote in a race without strong third-party candidates; and after the election, in spite of good news about the economy and the ending of the Islamic State, his numbers went down even more.

“Trump’s unpopularity is amazing, given the strength of the economy,” the Washington Post said on December 8. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed him losing support among his key bloc of white working class voters, and losing another seven points among independents , from 41 to 34 perent. That he was already upside down in the favorability ratings suggests he was elected by people who didn’t much like him. That is not like your storybook demagogue, who sweeps into power on a great wave of feeling. And it’s a hint that his feared and lamented attack on the traditional norms of behavior may not be as complete or as bad as it seemed.

Compared by his foes to Peron with an army of brown shirts, Trump seems more like a crooner or sports star with a huge, slavish retinue; he lashes out much more at personal slights than at political enemies; and his hungers seem less for political power than praise. In the campaign, his rallies gave off the whiff of the Beer Hall, but the people who went there were too small a number to win an election, and his other supporters seemed rather reluctant, and all too aware of his flaws.

In office, Trump’s actual deeds have been out of the standard Republican playbook, and have not worked out badly. The things that raise fears and drive down his poll numbers come out of his unfiltered mouth, driving both his foes and his allies insane.

In the campaign, people often complained about the rules he was breaking, the norms he had shattered, the restraints he had shattered, and expressed their concern they might never recover. But it seems now that it was exactly this sort of concern that may have held down his vote totals in last year’s election, and is driving his drop in the polls.

In August, the Battleground Poll found that 71 percent of Americans agreed his “behavior is not what I expect from a president,”’ even though some of them certainly helped to elect him, possibly hoping he’d change when in office, or that he was in any case better than Hillary. Meanwhile, the tweets and the tantrums, the insults and slurs, the attacks on war heroes and shout outs to slime have been doing real damage.

Perhaps the norms aren’t as dead as we feared.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:
Trump's unpopularity is being trumpeted by the same people who were so astonishingly wrong about the 2016 elections, and we care as much about how they think now as we did then.
1 posted on 01/01/2018 9:28:04 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
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To: Oshkalaboomboom
I say BS. Where I live, people still have Trump yard signs up. There are Trump bumper-stickers on cars. Everyone is happy and optimistic about President Trump and America's future.

I do not believe these polls for one second. The only complaints about President Trump come from the Alphabet Networks. In the real world President Trump is the most popular president since Ronald Reagan. Look at the map of the red counties. That map says it all.

2 posted on 01/01/2018 9:34:24 PM PST by Governor Dinwiddie (CNN is fake news.)
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

I thought the Washington Examiner wouldn’t be so biased.


3 posted on 01/01/2018 9:36:48 PM PST by Crucial
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To: Crucial
You mean like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaaEYC4RDUQ
4 posted on 01/01/2018 9:51:41 PM PST by EliRoom8
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To: EliRoom8

NBC/Marist poll showed Hillary with +11 prior to the election.


5 posted on 01/01/2018 9:54:49 PM PST by EliRoom8
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

Trump’s ratings only reflect the relentless hate ‘news’ directed at him over the last two years.


6 posted on 01/01/2018 10:04:28 PM PST by A strike (Television is almost as racist as Madison Ave.)
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

I supported Trump over all of the Republican candidates, continue to support him today and will vote for him again in 2020.

So there!


7 posted on 01/01/2018 10:05:39 PM PST by onedoug
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

In the campaign, his rallies gave off the whiff of the Beer Hall...

Thanks so much for this steaming pantload.


8 posted on 01/01/2018 10:15:09 PM PST by 867V309 (Lock Her Up)
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

So unpopular, he was elected president, asswipes!


9 posted on 01/01/2018 10:15:32 PM PST by glock rocks (... so much win!)
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

Yo, Noemie, get out of your Washington bubble...it’s a big country out here.


10 posted on 01/01/2018 10:18:30 PM PST by BookmanTheJanitor
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

Noemie, in pondering your anguish over PawPaw Trump I could give you some Beer Hall, but I’ll just give you some La Rochefoucauld:

“We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others.”


11 posted on 01/02/2018 12:03:21 AM PST by avenir ("But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine."--Titus 2)
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To: Oshkalaboomboom
TDS - find a cure.


12 posted on 01/02/2018 12:11:01 AM PST by 4Liberty (illegal immigration is a "process" crime too....)
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Donald TRUMP's approval rating is almost the same as Obama's at the end of Year ONE

13 posted on 01/02/2018 12:53:59 AM PST by KavMan
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To: Oshkalaboomboom
71 percent of Americans agreed his “behavior is not what I expect from a president”


Poll the terrorists, to find out what percentage of them expected to be exterminated by United States Marine Corps artillery.

Huge Decline in ISIS Propaganda Mirrors Losses on Battlefield


Poll the military experts, to see how many of them are still gainfully employed as military experts.

“You have one guy, who is Donald Trump, who has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Absolutely no clue about a strategy to beat ISIS overseas… ”

   —   military expert

14 posted on 01/02/2018 2:37:32 AM PST by greedo
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

sure this is true - they just keep selectively asking people so they can keep getting “results” to say he’s unpopular


15 posted on 01/02/2018 3:13:36 AM PST by b4me (God Bless the USA)
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To: Oshkalaboomboom
Gotta love statist angst on a Tuesday morning (or any time, for that matter :-) !

And yet hordes of the literate among them keep cranking out this tripe, refusing to believe that their failed worldview has been soundly repudiated.
One is tempted to the conclusion that their reams and reams of diarrhetic composition are penned not so much to change minds, as to salve their mortally wounded orthodoxy.

One of those dead white guys said it very well, a long, long time ago:  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

16 posted on 01/02/2018 4:58:02 AM PST by tomkat
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To: Oshkalaboomboom

“...even while he was winning over 300 votes in the Electoral College.”

Oy...I should be so unpopular.

(How can these people even write this k-rap with a straight face?)


17 posted on 01/02/2018 7:36:03 AM PST by moovova
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